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Building a liberal peace? A critical analysis of South Africa's engagement in the DRC 2003-2008

Hansen, Camilla Solvang (2012-03)

Thesis (MA)--Stellenbosch University, 2012.

Thesis

ENGLISH ABSTRACT: In recent years there has been an increase in the amount of research critiquing international complex peacebuilding operations. Some of this critique is rooted in critical theory and argues how a universal replicated approach to peace and development, namely the liberal peacebuilding, possibly represents an impediment to peace itself. The liberal peacebuilding, which merges peacebuilding and statebuilding, is founded on a “Western” liberal agenda promoting political and economic liberalisation. The contemporary peacebuilding project is seen as given, with a specific unquestionable outcome, namely a liberal state. Furthermore, assumptions about the applicability of this approach, particularly in conflict areas in the South, are disputed.
As regional leading states are becoming more involved in peace processes and development in their backyards, this study aims to investigate the peacebuilding agenda of such actors. South Africa has marked itself as an important actor in peacemaking and increasingly as a significant peacebuilding partner on the continent, through multilateral as well as bilateral channels. By looking at South Africa‟s peacebuilding role in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) from 2003 to 2008, this study aims at establishing whether South Africa, as a regional actor, promotes a liberal peacebuilding. This study concludes by discussing how there is little evidence to suggest that South Africa‟s strategy for peacebuilding in the DRC is differing from the liberal peacebuilding consensus. It seems evident that South Africa‟s vision of African solutions to African problems and an African Renaissance is in fact guided by the liberal peacebuilding agenda and the underlying liberal norms.
Is it not the aim of this study to critique the intentions of peacebuilding. Rather, it is the assumptions about what kind of peace the liberal peacebuilding promotes that need further analysis. Through a critical theory approach this study goes beyond current assumptions about the liberal peacebuilding project and questions the foundation on which liberal peacebuilding is built. This study aims at challenging the ontology and epistemology of the current peacebuilding debate in its theoretical approach as well as its scope. The intention is to shed light on and establishing a basis for a better and more nuanced understanding of the nature of peacebuilding by including the strategy and practice of regional actors in its analysis.